Avoid lost business and missed calls with your Cloud PBX

Did you know that according to a report by ComputerWeekly.com UK SMEs lose in the region of £90 million in sales and that's just from failing to pick up phone calls. Additional research conducted between 1,600 SME decision makers found that on average a missed call can lose a small or medium sized business around £1200. But if the business remains out of contact for a 24 hour period or longer, the average loss could even be as high as £20,000. The importance, for a business, of not missing phone calls has never been higher.

Increasingly teams and workers are finding themselves more and more mobile within the workplace, working less at their desks and finding that flexible working means more time out of the office. With that in mind how can hosted VoIP help and what solutions are there to ensure your business doesn't miss all too important calls?

Smart Call Routing and Forwarding gets the call to you

Your Cloud PBX will benefit from smart call routing which enables calls to your business phone number to be forwarded to whichever destination you want. This ensures that you can have calls forwarded to your mobile phone when you're out of the office. If you you're waiting for a call from a particularly important client and know the number, Caller ID routing can send their call direct to you. If you're based at home you can route calls to your home phone too!

Advanced Call Queuing holds on to your caller

Call abandonment times can be related to the amount of time a caller is prepared to wait. Losing a call due to your team being busy on the phone can mean losing a sale. With Call Queuing, businesses can reduce their call abandonment rates and hopefully keep their customers happy too. Call queuing aims to keep callers on hold by providing them information from average wait times, number of callers before them in the queue, and what position they are in the queue. Call queuing lets you add your own caller messaging, so you can record something imaginative to stop callers hanging up as soon as they hear your welcome message too. By keeping your customers on the line, you can save that sale.

Voicemail can help save lost revenue

When callers phone up a business during business hours, they expect to speak to someone, however if you're otherwise busy, the option to leave a voicemail can be especially helpful. With voicemail's a caller can enjoy the benefit of requesting a call-back and you can be rest assured that your callers are being treated professionally. Whether your brand is fun or more corporate, voicemail greetings can be tailored to your business with no extra effort at all.

Missed call alerts direct to your mailbox

If you do miss that call, your Cloud PBX will let you receive an alert direct to your email mailbox. You can even receive an alert if your calls are answered by your mailbox too. So, if you do unfortunately just miss a phone call you will always be notified which will allow you to chase up that lead before it has time to get cold.

Handle your out of hours calls

Missing a vital call when you're in the office one thing, but to ensure you don't miss leads when your office is closed, we would recommend some out of hours call handling. With in-depth out of hours scheduling you can forward calls to an alternate phone number such as your home phone or mobile, or alternatively give the caller the option to leave a voicemail. By handling out of hours calls in an elegant way, you present yourself in a professional manner while ensuring that calls aren't needlessly being missed.

These features are available and affordable to businesses of any size, whether a startup, SME or large corporation and all within reach with a hosted VoIP phone system and VoIP provider.